Of particular interest is the historic Christian belief that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate. At the outset, allow me to declare my presupposition that the existence of God is an ontologically necessary condition for the Christian claim concerning the deity of Christ. This much is clear: if there is no God, then there is no Son of God. I am assuming just for the sake of this argument that God exists. Others who do not share that assumption are cordially invited to debate our claim concerning the divine nature of Christ. But at least on this particular thread, I am asking you to please humor us by adopting our theistic presupposition to help focus the discussion. In other words, even given a theistic assumption, does the deity of Jesus follow from the historical and/or biblical evidence?
How do we know that we have accurate copies of the original? When an equivalent reliability standard is applied across the board, the end result is that compared with any other work of the ancient world, such as Plato or Homer’s Iliad, the NT has more manuscript evidence, earlier manuscript evidence, more accurately copied manuscripts, and more outside source corroboration than all other ancient literature combined. Furthermore, scholars have estimated the NT to be better than 99.5% accurate, with no extant discrepancies affecting any significant doctrines of the faith. But how do we know that the NT recorded fact and not fiction? For starters, we know that the NT was written early, and written by eyewitnesses. This we have confirmed by both external and internal evidence. In fact, an entire outline of the main events of the life of Christ can be reconstructed on the basis of extra-biblical, contemporaneous sources, such as the writings of historians and the correspondence of government officials. Also, the eyewitnesses left potentially self-incriminating information in the text. They made no attempt to smooth over apparent discrepancies, they did not expunge the record of their own moral and intellectual failures. The left in the part about a woman (!) being the first to witness the resurrected Christ, a big no-no within the first century legal system. They failed to gloss over their own disagreements and rivalries. And nearly everyone of them gave their lives for their testimony about Christ. These are all indicators that what they wrote was fact and not fiction. As Freegrace noted in an earlier post, the nineteenth-century legal expert Simon Greenleaf fairly concluded that the gospels “would have been received in evidence in any court of justice, without the slightest hesitation.”
Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli write: “Huston Smith notes, in The World’s Religions, that only two people ever astounded their contemporaries so much that the question they evoked was not “Who is he?” but “What is he?” They were Jesus and Buddha. The answers these two gave were exactly opposite. Buddha said unequivocally that he was a mere man, not a god – almost as if he foresaw later attempts to worship him. Jesus, on the other hand, claimed in many ways to be divine. The problem of Jesus’ identity emerges from the data.” (Handbook on Christian Apologetics, 150) C.S. Lewis said it best when he famously put to rest the patronizing assumption that one could reduce Jesus to just a “good guy.” That particular option is simply not open. Jesus made numerous claims to divinity. For example, He claimed to be worthy of sharing God’s glory, a blasphemous claim if not true (cf John 17:5, Is. 42:8). He also claimed to be equal with God (John 5:16-23; cf Is.40:25, 46:5). He claimed to be able to forgive sins, something any Jew at the time knew to be a claim to deity (Matt 9:1-13). He claimed to be the Messiah, which the OT declared would be God Himself (Mark 14:61-64; Is 9:6). He accepted worship, something even angels would not do (Ex 20:1-4; Rev. 22:8-9; John 20:28-29). He claimed His word to have equal authority with God’s (Matt 24:35). Moreover, the disciples attributed titles of deity to Him (Rev. 1:7, 2:8, 22:13; cf Is. 41:4, 44:6, 48:12). Jesus was not “a good guy.” He was either a blasphemous liar, a self-deluded maniac, or He was the Son of the living God.
Anyone can claim to be God. But wouldn’t proving it be the harder part? In the biblical sense, a miracle is not a source of entertainment, but a confirmation from God that a messenger is speaking the truth of God. In order to dispel the possibility of miracles, you first have to disprove the existence of God. Even David Hume knew that, which is why he did not deny the possibility of miracles, only their credibility. But that’s for another day. For now, since we are assuming for the basis of argument the existence of God, it follows that miracles cannot be a priori dismissed as impossible or incredible. The greatest miracle Jesus did was to raise Himself from the dead. There is no more forceful evidence that what Jesus claimed about his divine nature was in fact the truth. The empty tomb is an historical fact. To account for it, many alternative explanations have been promulgated, such as the “swoon” theory, the “disciples-went-to-the-wrong-tomb” theory, the “hallucination” theory, the “stolen-body” theory, and the always convincing “soldiers-fell-asleep” theory. None fit the facts. None offer a satisfactory explanation of the events. And all are forced upon the historical record out of an anti-supernaturalistic presupposition. The best explanation still remains that Jesus Christ was who He said He was, and He demonstrated the veracity of that claim by His resurrection from the dead.
Belief in Christ is not devoid of evidence concerning the divine nature of Christ. Faith is not the enemy of reason; and reason is not the enemy of faith. Faith and reason are complementary. Christianity is not a blind leap of faith into the dark, but a step of faith into the light.
What say you?